This
is a guest post by William Crotty, Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Public Life and Emeritus
Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, Boston. Dr. Crotty is author of Winning the
Presidency 2016 (Routledge, 2017)

If
Clinton wins:

Hillary Clinton is likely to continue to
face the criticisms, accusations and even threats of violence that became
familiar during the campaign. It was a negative campaign, intentionally on the
part of Donald Trump, and it worked for him. Trumpism will not vanish with
Election Day. Clinton’s victory will be questioned and its legitimacy
challenges, in line with the campaign that got her into office. The next four
years are not likely to be pleasant.

To succeed, Clinton needs:

1.
To recognize the
message of the election. Largely by default, Donald Trump fed into a level of
anger and alienation from an America left-behind by the economic gains of
recent decades. These are people who dread a changing, threatening
multicultural America. Their fears go back 40 to 50 or more years but have yet
to be effectively addressed. Establishing an agenda to begin to alleviate such
fears and the conditions that give them life is a priority.

2.
Hillary Clinton
also needs to recognize the message of the Sanders’ campaign. A more even
distribution of the nation’s wealth is a priority. Clinton made concessions on
this, on college costs and on international trade agreements to attract
Sanders’ support and the Millennials’ vote. These are not comfortable positions
for her. In the Senate and both
presidential campaigns, she did not see economic polarization as a problem,
arguing that those who made the money should keep it. There is a degree of
insensitivity here, as there was in accepting large speaking fees from Goldman
Sachs and other financial institutions (“everyone does it”). She also
reportedly praised Bill Clinton’s administration and its “business-friendly”
approach. Bill Clinton repealed New Deal legislation meant to control financial
industry excesses. He deregulated economic safeguards across the board and did
his best to promote Wall Street interests. In this regards, his administration
was a direct contributor to the financial collapse of 2007-2008. The promise of
putting her husband in charge of the economy gives substance to Trump’s claims
of the in-breeding of a political class running the country and one deaf to the
needs of ordinary citizens. A number of Democrats distrust her in this regard
and major liberal figures such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown
and a handful of others have promised to insure she remains true to the
compromises she made to get Sanders’ support.
Her ties to the Clinton Foundation will remain an issue as will her
belief in military solutions to international crises.

3. She needs to have a Democratic
majority in at least one house of the Congress. This was an on-and-off concern, decidedly
secondary to Clinton getting elected, in 2016. It should be an absolute priority in 2018 and 2020 in order to
combat the nihilistic world view of a Tea Party-controlled legislature
(“government is the problem”).

4.
Finally, there is an urgent need to rebuild the Democratic party at all
levels. President Obama was a disaster as party leader. He was not concerned
with party development, did not believe it important in achieving his
objectives, and devoted no time to it. There were consequences, as Republican
gains in the Congress post-2010 and in capturing two-thirds of the state
governorships and state legislatures were to attest. These adopted conservative
Far Right agendas on voting rights, abortion, social services and the rest.
Many implemented the Koch legislative agenda, designed explicitly as templates
for enactment at the state level.

The result of Obama’s insensitivity to
party politics has been, from the Congress to state legislatures and
governorships, and even local bodies such as school committees, to concede the
field to Koch Republicans and their allies. As one marking point,
Republican/Tea party majorities now control all southern state legislatures (up
from one-third when he took office). The Republican success in
below-presidential-level election has been stunning, with consequences to last
for years. The Democratic party will have to be rebuilt from the ground up, in
itself a daunting task.

There is much to do and it will not be
easy.

If
Trump wins:

As for a Trump win, who knows. He acts
on impulse and instinct; he listens to no one; he is ignorant of policy issues
and government; he had no consistent political affiliation before running for
president; he is not concerned with issues per
se, as a look at his policy proposals makes clear; he likes to attack; and
he is dismissive of government and has a predilection for one-man rule, an
approach that has served him well. He makes no effort to modify his language or
his accusatory behavior to appeal to centrists and moderate Republicans. He has
gone as far as refusing to agree to accept the voters’ decision on Election Day
(“wait and see’), with one qualification (if he wins). Meanwhile he has called
the election “rigged” and has done his best to undermine confidence in
government. He is an authoritarian and a demagogue and therefore is seen as a
threat to the future of America’s democratic state. Given all of this, what can
be said about his presidency?

Actually, quite a bit:

It will be a one-man rule. On economic
issues, he is a committed advocate of Reaganism and a neoliberal agenda. He
would cut the taxes of the wealthy and he says those at lower income levels
also. He would increase the movement of the nation’s wealth upwards, to the
tiny minority of billionaire, of which he claims to be one. On the environment,
he says climate change is a fraud, perpetrated by the Chinese. He is against
gun control He promises more Antonin Scalia-ideological appointments to the
Supreme Court and has released a list of Far Right potential names he will
choose from. On foreign policy issues, he likes Putin, his one-man rule and his
boldness in aggressively pushing Russian interests. He would destroy ISIS,
created he says by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He would reinstate
stop-and-search police tactics to fight crime, highly discriminatory against
blacks and other minorities and previously declared unconstitutional. In health
care, he would repeal “Obamacare” and substitute block grants for the states to
manage as they choose. He would greatly expand all branches of the military and
increase the development of nuclear weaponry. (A side note: a Clinton issue in
the campaign was to attack Trump as not having the “temperament” to be in
charge of nuclear weapons.)

Yes, Trump is impulsive, as well as
coming across as a misogynist and racist
as some have charged. Yet in terms of the predictability of his agenda, it is
quite clear even though not developed in the campaign. It is the exercise of the power of the office
of president, his “suitability” in these terms, which raises questions.